
It’s been tested that the closer a reader looks into a piece of literature, the more attached and interested the plot is. Just like a movie, the more times a story is read, more hidden details become apparent; especially after a close reading of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The author built her main character, the narrator, to represent the way that women were property of men during that historical time period. Through her creativity, Gilman created a plot, where symbolically a woman is stuck inside the wallpaper, however that mysterious woman is actually a representation of the narrator. 

“The Yellow Wallpaper” takes place in a big, early English-like garden house, many miles from town. The narrator is living there because her husband decided that it would be best for her recovery, since she’s dealing with some sort of mental illness. The narrator is not a fan of her room in the house, because it’s at the very top and it’s beat up and not home like. She especially dislikes the yellow patterned wallpaper that is hanging up all throughout the room. However, the description Gilman gives of the wallpaper directly correlates with the narrator as a character. The narrator says that the “paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had used it. It is stripped off—the paper—in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down” (301). From this description, the wallpaper seems very used and beat up, which is one way to describe the narrator. She suffers from a mental illness, but the treatment she’s receiving is ultimately beating her up and making her weaker; her husband makes her “take pains to control myself—before him, at least, and that makes me very tired” (301). Just like a boys’ school would put stress on the walls, John does that with his wife. The wall is also described as “pronounced enough to constantly irritate” (303), which from a different point of view is the way John views his wife. The narrator is very passionate about how much she dislikes the yellow wallpaper, however she and the wallpaper are very comparable. 

The narrator continues to dislike the wallpaper throughout the story, however it becomes more than just wallpaper. She starts believing that there may be something hiding behind it, like a woman. “There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will…and it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern” (305), which increases the narrator’s dislike of the wallpaper. She starts becoming more and more paranoid about the wallpaper and her personal discovery. The figure behind the wall intrigued her, because she thought that it “seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (306). The narrator is subconsciously relating herself to the woman stuck behind the wall. She hasn’t realized it yet, but the figure of the woman is stuck behind the wallpaper, just like she’s physically a woman but her thoughts are trapped because of her oppressive husband. 

Later in the story, the narrator finally decides on the idea that there is a woman behind the wallpaper, rather than just speculating. She starts trying to help the woman escape as much as she can. As “soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her,” she continues to rescue her by pulling and shaking and “before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper” (310). At this point, the narrator is extremely eager to get that woman out of the wallpaper, but she then thinks of ways to trap her again. Her ideas are coming from the way she’s been taught to think by her husband. Her initial thought was to pull that woman out of the wallpaper and set her free, but then she thought about trapping her, the way John would want her to think. However, she continued to pull her out, she continued to pull herself out. This is the turning point of the whole story, because she realizes that she’s the one she’s been helping all along. As soon as that woman stepped out of the wall, her mind was set free and she started referring to herself rather than the woman. The narrator has fully transformed to the woman in the wallpaper. She looked at the wallpaper and wondered if the rest of the women would all come out of the wallpaper just as she did. The woman/narrator quickly becomes worried again and “supposes I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard” (311). Now as one person, they’re afraid of what John might think but strong enough together to actually set themselves free. John walked into the room and they said, “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (312)! At this moment, the narrator finally realizes the way she’d been treated based on gender differences and her mental sickness. She realized she was stuck in the wall. 

Although there definitely wasn’t a woman stuck inside the wallpaper and the narrator might not have physically escaped, there was an epiphany of sorts. She was finally able to understand how trapped she was. She was trapped mentally, through her thoughts, because she wasn’t allowed to express herself through writing or opinions. As well as being trapped physically in the house that her husband put a three-month lease on in hopes that she’d become sane again. Throughout the story, the narrator went from disliking the wallpaper to symbolically coming out of the wallpaper. The wallpaper represented the house that she was trapped in and dull life she was living, yet it was the one thing she was allowed to express her opinion on. Thankfully, the two women in this story were able to escape, but they weren’t the only two put in this type of situation. The rest may not have been as lucky and may not have been pulled out from behind that gross, yellow wallpaper.  